Revolutions are the punctuation marks of history. They interrupt, reset, and redirect the trajectories of nations. Since its unification under Prithvi Narayan Shah in the 18th century, Nepal has been a nation of repeated upheavals—Rana oligarchy, the 1950 democratic revolution, the 1990 People’s Movement, the Maoist insurgency, the Madhesh andolans, Janajati uprisings, Dr. C. K. Raut’s secessionist campaign and now the Gen Z–driven protests of 2025. Each carried the promise of transformation. Yet unlike the United States, United Kingdom, or Western Europe, Nepal has not translated its revolutions into sustained prosperity.
The answer, as Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue in Why Nations Fail, lies not in culture or geography but in institutions. Nations prosper when revolutions replace extractive systems with inclusive ones—broad-based, accountable, and growth-oriented. Nations fail when they merely recycle elites under new banners. Sadly, Nepal’s revolutions have almost always fallen into the latter category.
From Unification to Rana Rule: A State Built on Exclusion
Prithvi Narayan Shah’s “garden of four castes and thirty-six ethnicities” was poetic, but the soil of this garden was hierarchy. The 1854 Muluki Ain codified caste discrimination and stratified society into graded inequalities. Where the American Revolution of 1776—however incomplete—planted the seeds of universal equality, Nepal institutionalized exclusion.
The Ranas (1846–1951) deepened this extraction. They monopolized power, wealth, and education, cutting Nepal off from the industrial revolutions reshaping the globe. While Britain laid railroads and Japan modernized under the Meiji Restoration, Nepal remained feudal and insulated. This century of stagnation was Nepal’s great “lost opportunity,” as economist Douglass North might call it, where institutions could have pivoted toward inclusion but entrenched extraction instead.
The 1950 Democratic Revolution: Promise and Collapse
The anti-Rana movement, backed by India, promised democracy. But Nepal’s first democratic experiment was fragile and captured by elites. Within a decade, King Mahendra dissolved parliament and imposed the Panchayat system, centralizing monarchy.
Contrast this with postwar Japan, where U.S.-driven reforms dismantled militarist institutions, expanded education, and promoted industrial policy. Within two decades, Japan was a global economic leader. Nepal, by contrast, recycled aristocratic privilege under a new constitutional veneer.
The 1990 People’s Movement: Democracy Without Delivery
The 1990 Jana Andolan restored multiparty democracy. On paper, it was Nepal’s “third wave” of democratization, akin to Eastern Europe’s transitions. Yet in practice, it delivered little. Parties became patronage machines; corruption hollowed out governance; marginalized groups—Madhesis, Janajatis, Dalits, women—remained sidelined.
As Samuel Huntington observed, when political mobilization outpaces institutionalization, instability follows. Nepal had mobilized people but failed to build institutions capable of delivering prosperity. Compare this with South Korea and Taiwan, which democratized in the same era but simultaneously invested in education, technology, and export-driven growth. Nepal’s democracy remained “illiberal,” as Fareed Zakaria might describe it: ballots without accountability, rights without enforcement.
The Maoist Insurgency and People’s Movement II
The Maoist insurgency (1996–2006) emerged from Nepal’s deep exclusions—landlessness, caste oppression, rural neglect. It cost 17,000 lives but succeeded in abolishing monarchy. The 2006 People’s Movement promised a republic, federalism, and secularism.
Yet, like the French Revolution, which replaced monarchy with Napoleon’s empire, Nepal’s radical moment was tamed by elites. Federalism became a bargaining chip, transitional justice stalled, and remittance dependency deepened. The republic was born, but extractive logics persisted.
Madhesh Andolans and Janajati Uprisings
The Madhesh Andolans of 2007 and 2015 revealed how shallow Nepal’s inclusivity remained. Madhesis, long marginalized in citizenship laws and underrepresented in state institutions, protested violently for recognition. Janajati and Adibasi movements likewise sought federalism rooted in ethnic identity. These movements resembled the Indian independence struggle, where marginalized groups pushed for recognition within a diverse polity.
Yet Nepal’s constitution-making failed to resolve the question of belonging. Federalism was adopted, but boundaries were drawn to preserve elite control. The result was symbolic devolution without substance. Where India’s 1950 constitution institutionalized pluralism, Nepal’s 2015 charter institutionalized compromise.
Dr. C. K. Raut’s Secessionist Campaign: Radical Aspirations, Structural Limits
Dr. C. K. Raut, a Cambridge-educated scientist turned activist, took Madhesi frustration to its radical conclusion: secession. His Alliance for Independent Madhesh argued that equality within Nepal’s system was impossible. His arrests under sedition charges highlighted the contradiction of a “democracy” suppressing dissent.
Raut achieved three things: he internationalized Madhesi grievances, mobilized youth disillusioned with mainstream leaders, and forced Kathmandu to take Madhesh seriously. But his movement faltered. Its secessionist demand alienated allies, its organizational depth was shallow, and eventually Raut signed a 2019 deal with Prime Minister Oli, forming the Janamat Party. He entered mainstream politics, but without transforming institutions.
The outcome mirrors global patterns. The African National Congress in South Africa dismantled apartheid because institutional reform accompanied leadership change. The IRA in Northern Ireland moved from violence to peace only under the Good Friday Agreement, which restructured governance. Nepal, by contrast, co-opted Raut but left Madhesi exclusion largely intact. His movement’s failure was systemic: the state absorbed dissent without inclusivity.
Gen Z and the Statelessness Crisis
Now, Nepal faces a youth-led revolt unlike any before. Gen Z, raised on smartphones and migration, is impatient with corruption, unemployment, and exclusion. The statelessness crisis—where thousands are denied citizenship due to parental origin or bureaucracy—has become a flashpoint. How can a nation prosper if its own youth are not recognized as citizens?
Unlike Maoists or Madhesi activists, Gen Z is not ideological. Their protests resemble Chile’s 2019 constitutional uprising or Tunisia’s Arab Spring: pragmatic demands for dignity, jobs, and accountability. Yet history warns: revolutions without institutions risk collapse. The Arab Spring brought brief hope but in Egypt restored military rule. Nepal’s Gen Z must avoid repeating this fate.
Why Nepal Has Not Prospered: Global Comparisons
History is full of revolutions that succeeded precisely because they built inclusive institutions. In 1776, the United States 1776 created a representative government that, over time, expanded suffrage and rights, unleashing a culture of entrepreneurship. The French Revolution of 1789, despite its chaos, dismantled feudal privilege and institutionalized meritocracy through the Napoleonic Code. South Africa in 1994 replaced apartheid with a pluralist constitution under Nelson Mandela’s leadership, embedding minority rights and democratic accountability. India, at independence in 1947, despite staggering poverty and deep social divisions, enfranchised all citizens from the start, fulfilling B. R. Ambedkar’s principle of “one person, one vote, one value.” And across East Asia in the 1960s through the 1980s, countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore transformed themselves by moving from authoritarianism to inclusive economic growth through investments in education, industry, and meritocracy. Nepal, by contrast, repeated the same error: each revolution toppled rulers but preserved exclusion. Elites rotated, systems stagnated, and as Acemoglu and Robinson remind us, the country never experienced “creative destruction”—the displacement of entrenched elites by institutions that genuinely include and empower the many.
The Way Forward: From Protest to Institution
Nepal’s path to prosperity requires breaking the repetitive cycle of revolt without reform, and the lessons from global history are clear. Like India in 1950, Nepal must enfranchise all citizens regardless of gender, caste, or parental origin, because a democracy that leaves many stateless is democracy in name only. Governance must shift from patronage to professionalism, as Singapore demonstrated, where meritocratic institutions became the backbone of growth. The economy, long dependent on remittances, must diversify through education, infrastructure, and green industries, much as South Korea did to lift itself from poverty into prosperity. Federalism, too, must be made substantive: provinces require genuine fiscal and administrative authority, not just symbolic maps, echoing how South Africa stabilized its post-apartheid society by empowering regions. Finally, Gen Z must not only take to the streets but also enter the arena of governance, transforming their energy into organizations capable of legislating, reforming, and delivering—because protest without institution risks becoming just another forgotten chapter in Nepal’s long history of unfinished revolutions.
Conclusion: Nepal’s Final Critical Juncture
Nepal’s revolutions have been epic in scope but limited in outcome. 1950 ended the oligarchy but empowered the monarchy. 1990 restored democracy but not delivery. In 2006, the monarchy was abolished, but entrenched corrupt parties. 2015 promised federalism but diluted autonomy. Dr. C. K. Raut’s campaign raised secessionist aspirations but ended in co-optation.
Now, the Gen Z revolution is Nepal’s final critical juncture. If it merely replaces one elite with another, Nepal will remain a nation of upheavals without prosperity. But if it builds inclusive institutions—citizenship for all, meritocracy, economic opportunity, and federalism with substance—the “garden of four castes and thirty-six ethnicities” can finally bloom, not as rhetoric but as reality.
History is unambiguous: nations fail when they exclude. Nations prosper when they include. The choice is stark. Nepal can repeat its past, or it can reimagine its future.
(The author holds an MD from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and has completed the Global Clinical Scholars Research Training (GCSRT) program at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.)